Tag: Jason Von Flue

In the brief history of the UFC, there have been a handful of submissions so unique, so brilliant, so positively Raven that they became synonymous with the fighters who dared attempt them in the octagon. That a sport as old as jiu-jitsu is still capable of evolving and expanding its techniques is a credit to the dedication and inventiveness of the modern mixed martial artist, and a fact that has led to many a thrilling moment inside the cage.

Recently, UGer Tycho made the painstaking effort of cataloging and graphing every single submission ever executed in the octagon by frequency. Not wanting to let such a thorough and digestible work simply come and go, we decided to focus on the rarest of rarities, the aforementioned “signature” submissions, and rank them according to brutality, ingenuity, and of course, brutality. Enjoy.

(Does a Kimura by any other name hurt just as much? Pic: JudoInfo.com)

To enter the cage, to square off against another man trained to hurt you, makes you a tough guy. To make him surrender—the fight, his pride, his win bonus, his status in the sport—makes you a fighter. To become so proficient, so inventive in the art of submission that they name a particular form of kicking another man’s ass in your honor, that makes you immortal. One by one these men will fall, each and every one of them, but every time a limb is cranked, every time a man is rendered unconscious, their legacy will live on. Here’s a tribute to five men whose names grace the finer side of fighting.